Repost: Starlight, part one

["jbstories _" <jbstories@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is just a repost of the first part of "Starlight", a few people have
said that they missed it the first time around. So, if you've already read
this part sorry, and if you haven't enjoy :)

Star Light
=================

"Star light,
Star bright,
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
Wish upon a star tonight"
==================

The old children's song ran through Buffy's mind as she lay motionless on
the ground staring up a the sky above her. The stars were twinkling, they
looked mischievous, it was almost as if they were winking at her, laughing.
She hated them and wanted everyone to go out, wanted them to stop taunting
her and teasing her. She wanted them to leave her alone, but she couldn't
stop staring at them, no matter how strong a constitution she thought she
had she just couldn't stop.

Idly she noticed that the longer she stared at the them the more her vision
was starting to blur. The stars above her were starting to fuse together,
forming what seemed to be streams of white light to her tired eyes.

She felt light-headed.

The pain in her side had almost disappeared, she noted listlessly, but she
still couldn't move. It was as if none of the signals her brain was sending
to the rest of her body weren't getting through. The connections that told
her limbs to move and that told her body to hurt had been compromised,
broken. She was broken.

She was paralyzed. She was bleeding. Her vision was going. She was cold.

She was dying.

When she realized that her condition was worsening by the moment, that she
was dying, she almost laughed. In fact she would have, if she could have.
It was just too un-fucking believable. After everything that had happened
to her over the past five years, after all of the times she had averted the
apocalypse and saved the world from hundred year old demons, she was going
to die paralyzed, and alone in the middle of cemetery.

Finally, she reached a point where she could no longer see the stars above
her. In fact she couldn't see anything. Her world now totally consisted of
the dark and the thoughts in her head. She was mildly disappointed. She
realized now that she couldn't see them that she missed the stars, missed
their twinkle…even if they were winking at her and mocking her. They had
keep her company. But they were gone now.

In the night, in the dark, she found her thoughts always returning to one
thing. One person actually. Willow. Her thoughts were almost entirely of
the Willow variety. Willow smiling. Willow laughing. Willow with her
'resolve face' on. Willow typing at her computer. Willow lounging on her
bed. Willow, Willow, Willow. She wanted Willow to be there with her. She
didn't want Willow to be part of the dying, but she wanted her there. Every
time she thought about Willow not being there, she felt her heart constrict,
making it more difficult for her to breathe. And it was already plenty
difficult.

"Well, this has been an illuminating experience," Buffy thought to herself
as her head tilted to the side. "Five years, and I have to be on my death
bed before I admit it…mom was right, I AM a procrastinator."

She had always thought that when her number was finally called, she would go
quickly. That just like everything else her life would be taken away from
her in one violent, passionate, all-consuming yank. Over before she even
knew what was happening. She should have known that it wouldn't have been
that easy though. She should have known that she would go, like she lived.
Fighting valiantly to the end. Nope, Buffy Summers didn't do anything the
easy way and she certainly wasn't going to start with her death.

The thing was that she had always assumed that those last moments before she
passed away would be filled with images from her distant past. Stuff like
skating with her dad, and building sand castles on the beach. And that
those things would be followed by images of being called by Merick, and of
meeting Xander, Giles, and Willow, and of fighting the good fight. And
finally, she had thought there would be Angel. His image hovering in her
mind like a guardian, carrying her over the threshold.

But it wasn't like that at all.

Yes, she thought about growing up. Yes, she thought about being called,
burning down her old high school and moving to Sunnydale. And yes, she
thought about Xander, and Giles and Angel. But, it was Willow who she
thought of most. Whom she saw in her mind watching over her. And in this
state, where she had nothing left to lose, and more importantly nothing left
to fear, or protect, or hide, she had a epiphany. It was to her, what the
apple was to Newton, and the light-bulb to Edison, and it struck her with a
such a force that she was almost certain it would have been enough to shock
her upright.

She loved Willow. No, she was in love with Willow. She was in love with
Willow.

Willow, her best friend, her confidant, her source, her strength. Her love.
She was in love with Willow.

The discovery was enough to make her cry, to make her wish that she had died
in the snap of finger like she had always envisioned. It made her heart
constrict, and her breathing shallow, and her hands sweat. Realizing that
she loved Willow made her hurt so much that she was sure she was going to
die of the pain, rather than from the injury she had received.

And the reason that it hurt so much? Because she realized that Willow would
never know how she felt, how much she meant to her. It hurt so much,
because she would never get to tell Willow, never get to hold her and love
her the way she now realized she had wanted to for a very long time. It
hurt because her mind was filled with images of what could have been…what
should have been…and what would never be. And it killed her all that much
faster.

"My most stunning defeat, by not using my tongue," Buffy thought to herself,
twisting the words of Billy Shakespeare to apply to her situation, as her
eyes closed. "Ain't that a bitch."

===================================================================

Willow paced around the room, hands clasped behind her back with her head
bowed down. She couldn't believe that this was happening, this wasn't
suppose to happen. Alright, so really it was suppose to happen, and it had
been happening over and over again since the beginning of recorded history
and probably before that too, but it wasn't suppose to happen to Buffy. Not
again. Not so soon. Buffy was different from the Slayers before her,
everyone who had ever met her said that. She wasn't suppose to go down like
the rest of them, she was special. She was suppose to live.

They-they being Willow, Xander, and Giles-had found Buffy lying in the
cemetery, barely breathing and unconscious four hours before. They had to
assess her injuries on the scene which meant that Willow got the job of
checking Buffy's body for injuries. She had felt around for broken bones,
and bruises and had been at a complete loss when she found nothing wrong,
then she found the rip in Buffy's shirt. Lifting the end of the shirt up so
that she could see what was wrong, she spotted a tear of a puncture mark,
and coming out of the puncture mark were a series of nasty looking red
streaks fanning across Buffy stomach, and underneath her around to her back.
The mark had enflamed the entire left side of the Slayer's body, and her
skin was warm to touch.

It was a demon bite. A bad one.

They knew that they couldn't take Buffy to the hospital with an injury like
this. It would raise questions that they couldn't answer, not to mention
the fact that there was nothing the doctors could do for Buffy that they
couldn't do themselves. So Giles had carefully lifted Buffy's limp body
into his arms and carried her to the car.

Off to Fort Giles they went.

Willow stopped pacing and closed her eyes. The longer Buffy remained
unconscious the harder she found it to breathe. She felt shut off, like she
was missing a part of her being. An important part, and it made even the
simplest of functions difficult. She tilted her head to look at the door
leading to Giles' bedroom where Buffy was resting. As she stared at the
door she felt the tears that she had just managed to suppress emerging once
again. Straining against her eyelids, burning her eyes.

"Where are you going?" Giles asked looking up from his book as Willow headed
towards his bedroom. He was trying to find the best way to treat Buffy's
injury by searching through a number of texts. Unfortunately most of the
medical texts dealing with demons hadn't been transcribed to English, and
while Willow was supremely intelligent, she didn't read Latin. In addition
to his research Giles had been watching her closely since they arrived at
his house. He and Xander were quite concerned about Buffy's condition, but
it was affecting Willow in a much more intense way. Giles had never seen
Willow so desolate, and after Oz's departure she had been quite depressed.
He was worried about her. In fact he was just worried in general.

"I need to be with her," Willow responded softly turning around to face the
older man. She knew that she didn't need to say anymore. Even if Giles
didn't completely understand, he wouldn't question her about this. The
Watcher simply nodded, and Willow continued down the hallway.

Xander watched the exchange between Willow and Giles silently. He had
nothing of import to interject, and he couldn't see anything humorous in the
situation to comment on so he remained silent. He loved Buffy, he really
did. He knew that he didn't have a chance with her romantically-that had
been made quite clear over the years-and he was happy with Anya, but he
still loved her. He also knew that Willow loved Buffy too, that they had a
bond that he wasn't sure he would ever really understand, and he knew that
if Buffy lying in that room possibly dying was affecting him as much as it
was, it had to have been ten times as bad for Willow.

Willow opened the door to Giles' bedroom and closed it softly behind her.
The moment her eyes fell on Buffy's prone figure lying on the bed, so
peaceful and so lifeless at the same time the tears that she had barely been
containing began to fall, and she had to lean up against the door for
support.

After a moment Willow pushed herself away from the door and walked over to
the side of the bed taking a seat on the chair Giles had placed beside the
bed. She had been given the task of changing Buffy into something more
comfortable. The Slayer kept a couple spare change of clothes at Giles'
house…in case of an emergency. It was an emergency. It had almost killed
her seeing, and feeling Buffy so powerless, so helpless as she changed her.
Buffy was always so strong, so full of life and energy that seeing her lying
there inert had been devastating.

Willow reached over and picked up Buffy's hand holding it in her own, gently
stroking it with her thumb. She had so many feelings welling up inside of
her, there was so much that she wanted to say, but she couldn't seem to find
any words that would convey the depths of her emotions, and her despair.
She felt so helpless.

"I know that you can hear me," Willow said softly. She had been sitting
there holding Buffy's hand for almost fifteen minutes before she began to
speak. "So I'm going to talk to you, and I'm probably going to babble…a
lot…not that there's anything new about that, since I am known for running
off at the mouth. Not that my mouth actually sprints away from my body, I
just start talking and don't stop," Willow paused and smiled sadly. "See,
it's happening already."

"You, ah…you gave us all a real scare there, it took Giles for ever to find
your pulse. It was so surreal, I didn't even feel like I was in my body…it
was like being in some sort of nightmare, only I couldn't wake up and go to
you so that you could make it all better. I thought that I was going to
have a heart attack…but it was probably just a stroke."

"You look so peaceful. Like you're just asleep or something. I know that
this is probably the only night that you're likely to get eight full hours
sleep, but I'd really, really, appreciate it if you woke up. I'd even bake
you cookies," Willow continued her voice cracking a little as the tears
started to stream down her face again.

"I'm always up for cookies," Buffy responded in an almost inaudible voice as
she squeezed Willow's hand. The movement was weak, but it was definitely
there.

"Buffy?" Willow asked looking up at the Slayer's face. Tears were cascading
down her face making it difficult for her to make out her friends features.

"Yeah," Buffy said in the same soft voice, only this time her lips curved up
in a small voice. "I'd really like to see you, but my eyes aren't
co-operating," she continued coughing a bit.

"Open them," Willow said suddenly wanting to see Buffy's eyes more than
anything else in the world. You could see Buffy's soul in her eyes, strong
and gentle, and Willow wanted to look into them. Wanted to look into Buffy.

"That's what they're aren't co-operating with," Buffy responded. "I tried
'open sesame', and 'abracadabra' and still, nothing. I'm running out of
clichés."

"How about hocus pocus?" Willow suggested a small smile working it's way
across her face.

"Hocus," Buffy said one eye slowly opening. "Pocus," she said as the other
eye opened as well. "I'm indebted to you Will, I never would have thought
of that."

"Well," Willow said shrugging. "It's kind of my area of expertise."

Buffy smiled in response to Willow's answer, but the expression left her
face shortly after followed by a frown, and then a rhythmic shaking of her
body. Her eyes closing as her body shuddered over and over again
uncontrollably. A slight sheen covering her body through it all.

Willow stood up and leaned over Buffy when her body started to convulse.

"Buffy," Willow said reaching out for her friend. Placing her hands on
Buffy's shoulder she tried to hold the jerking Slayer still, but she soon
realized that her actions were foolish and stopped. Even if she had been
able to keep Buffy still it wouldn't have been of any use. "Buffy," she
called again this time more urgently.

No response.

Willow back away from the bed, nearly tripping over the chair she had been
sitting on as she started to back up towards the door.

==================================================================

"Giles!" Willow called opening the door and tearing out into the hallway.
"Giles!"

"Willow…what is it?" Giles said meeting Willow by the kitchen.

Willow didn't respond verbally, she just looked nervously back in the
direction she had come from.

"Willow," Giles said firmly placing a hand on her shoulder. "What's wrong?
Is it Buffy?"

"She's shaking," Willow responded snapping out of it. "Sweating and
shaking. I couldn't stop her. I called her name but she didn't respond.
Just shaking and sweating," Willow continued in a frantic state.

"Wha…" Giles started to say once Willow finished speaking, but he cut off
his own answer and headed down the hallway rapidly followed by Willow,
Xander, and in a distance fourth Spike.

When they entered the room Buffy was still shaking but less violently than
before. Her skin had turned an unhealthy pallor and was almost gray in
colour. She was moaning and tossing her head from side to side.

"Dammit," Giles said moving over to the bed. "The poison…we didn't get it
all out."

Willow and Xander followed Giles to side of the bed, but once they got there
they realized they didn't know what they were suppose to do.

"Look on the bright side," Spike commented from the doorway. "Maybe the
next Slayer will be taller."

"De-fanged or not, if you say anything remotely like that ever again I will
personally rip off a table leg and stab you in the heart," Xander said
turning around angrily.

"There's no need to get hostile," Spike said glaring at Xander. "It's not
like this is a tragedy or anything. It's just…what did that bloody monkey
call it…the circle of life. Yeah, the circle of life. This should be a
time of celebration, the dawning of a new era. Out with old, in with the
new," he continued.

"The Dagger of Gothar, it's mounted on my wall," Giles said ignoring Spike
for a moment and addressing Willow. "It's the right size and shape, it
should do. I need to get it and place it on the stove to warm."

"Right," Willow muttered softly before turning and heading out the room in a
near jog.

"Xander, get the supply box, bring it in here," Giles said turning to the
remaining member of the gang. "And make sure that all of the windows are
closed," Giles added as an afterthought as he ran a nervous hand through his
hair.

"What? No job for Spike?" the vampire asked after Xander pushed by him
roughly. "I'm hurt, wounded really. I thought we friends," he continued
smirking.

Giles ripped his attention away from Buffy's struggling form and turned to
face Spike. He stared at him for a moment, then in a lightening quick move
that would have impressed Buffy had she not been fighting for her life at
the moment, Giles was across the room and pressing Spike up against the
wall.

"I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but we're not friends.
You're presence in tolerated, not desired, and it's barely tolerated at
that. Now, you'll sit in the corner and you'll shut your bloody mouth or
there won't be enough of you left to fit in a Tupperware container. Now,
have I made myself clear?" Giles asked pressing Spike more firmly against
the wall for emphasis.

"Bloody clear," Spike said in a somewhat strangled tone. "I said 'bloody
clear'!" the vampire repeated when Giles didn't let him go.

Giles put Spike down and stared at him for a moment before finally turning
around and heading back to Buffy's side. The Slayer had stopped shaking and
was now just lying on the bed prone, and sweating.

Willow and Xander arrived within moments of each other, both heading
straight for the bed.

"Giles," Willow said staring at Buffy's form. "What are we doing?"

"I didn't realize how bed the bite was before. I was negligent, more
concerned with getting her back here. I didn't…"

"How about we do the self-loathing part of the assessment later, and get on
with healing now," Xander said cutting off Giles' self chastisement.

"There's a salve in the kit, it should bring the poison the demon injected
into her to the surface. Once we've got it there we can neutralize it,"
Giles responded following Xander's suggestion.

"Neutralize it?" Willow asked her brows furrowing in confusion. "How…Giles
no…" Willow said looking up at him in astonishment.

"Yes," Giles responded. "It's the only way. If we leave the poison in
there for much longer we won't get a chance to drag it to the surface again,
and if it stays in there…"

"She dies," Xander said finishing Giles' sentence.

They stood in silence for a moment, each contemplating what they would have
to do in the next few minutes.

"Xander check on the dagger, Willow get the salve and apply it," Giles said
disturbing the silence.

Willow moved over to the kit and searched through it quickly until she came
upon the salve that Giles said she was to apply. Kneeling down beside the
bed Willow lifted up the end of Buffy shirt until the wound was revealed.
Carefully, Willow applied the salve to the wound, and then the area around
it.

"What now?" she asked looking up at Giles once she was done.

"We wait," the watcher replied.

==================================================================

"And you're certain that all of the windows are closed?" Giles asked when
Xander arrived a few minutes later holding the red hot dagger with a couple
of oven mitts.

"They're closed," Xander said soberly.

The next five minutes or so passed in a haze for all of them. Xander handed
the mitts and the dagger over to Giles, then he and Willow leaned over the
bed and proceeded to hold Buffy down. Giles then applied the burning dagger
to Buffy's side over top of the tear the demon had left in her skin. As
soon as the dagger touched her flesh Buffy's eyes had popped open, and as
Giles applied it fully to her skin the Slayer let loose a horrific scream.
Then she quieted once Giles removed the dagger. Then Giles applied the
dagger to her skin once again and Buffy screamed once more and started to
thrash around. This process continued for around five minutes although it
seemed like five years to the occupants of the room.

Finally, when the wound was sealed and poison neutralized the gang moved
away from the bed, and sat down on the floor surrounding it.

"Yeah," Xander said after a few moments in a kind of half sigh. "This beat
the hell out of seeing Galaxy Quest."

=============================================================

That's it for part one, more to come later,
Janine
(jbstories@xxxxxxxxxxx)

P.S. Please, drop me a line and let me know what you think...you know the
saying feedback=food:)
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